Overland Content Feedback Thread

spartaxoxo · June 3

disky wrote: »

I am sure that the majority of people who regularly take part in overland content enjoy it at the level of difficulty it's at right now, but that metric misses a couple of important factors: people who don't like it don't do it, and people who don't find something for them in ESO stop playing.

They have stated in the past that the vast majority of the playerbase prefers the story content and exploring.

TaSheen · June 3

spartaxoxo wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Eh, so far, I'm not one who fits the "stories that everyone can beat" demographic. High Isle was my last attempt at that.

It didn't go well. It took me DAYS of agony to get through it. I've never even considered attempting the following zone stories. Not hap'nin. And.... up to that point.... zone questing was what I lived for.

Necrom's final boss would probably be easier for you. You have ages to activate the synergy

Depends on what "ages" is in my realtime - satellite is.... hardly optimal, and combined with slow reflexes....

spartaxoxo · June 3

TaSheen wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Eh, so far, I'm not one who fits the "stories that everyone can beat" demographic. High Isle was my last attempt at that.

It didn't go well. It took me DAYS of agony to get through it. I've never even considered attempting the following zone stories. Not hap'nin. And.... up to that point.... zone questing was what I lived for.

Necrom's final boss would probably be easier for you. You have ages to activate the synergy

Depends on what "ages" is in my realtime - satellite is.... hardly optimal, and combined with slow reflexes....

I was letting my companion kill it so I could hear dialogue properly. And I just avoided damage/killed adds. I kind of zoned out at some point and didn't even notice that my companion wasn't getting anything done. And then eventually an audio queue reminded me that I was supposed to use a synergy in order to be able to damage the boss properly.

So, I had mega ping in the attention span and didn't die. If there was a punishment for not getting to it fast enough beyond make the fight slower, I didn't notice one.

TaSheen · June 3

spartaxoxo wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Eh, so far, I'm not one who fits the "stories that everyone can beat" demographic. High Isle was my last attempt at that.

It didn't go well. It took me DAYS of agony to get through it. I've never even considered attempting the following zone stories. Not hap'nin. And.... up to that point.... zone questing was what I lived for.

Necrom's final boss would probably be easier for you. You have ages to activate the synergy

Depends on what "ages" is in my realtime - satellite is.... hardly optimal, and combined with slow reflexes....

I was letting my companion kill it so I could hear dialogue properly. And I just avoided damage/killed adds. I kind of zoned out at some point and didn't even notice that my companion wasn't getting anything done. And then eventually an audio queue reminded me that I was supposed to use a synergy in order to be able to damage the boss properly.

So, I had mega ping in the attention span and didn't die.

That's.... interesting. Were you dealing with the whole mega lag the last couple of weeks, or was that before?

The cues - either visual or audio - have (for me) always been just as the actual synergy is expiring.

spartaxoxo · June 3

TaSheen wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Eh, so far, I'm not one who fits the "stories that everyone can beat" demographic. High Isle was my last attempt at that.

It didn't go well. It took me DAYS of agony to get through it. I've never even considered attempting the following zone stories. Not hap'nin. And.... up to that point.... zone questing was what I lived for.

Necrom's final boss would probably be easier for you. You have ages to activate the synergy

Depends on what "ages" is in my realtime - satellite is.... hardly optimal, and combined with slow reflexes....

I was letting my companion kill it so I could hear dialogue properly. And I just avoided damage/killed adds. I kind of zoned out at some point and didn't even notice that my companion wasn't getting anything done. And then eventually an audio queue reminded me that I was supposed to use a synergy in order to be able to damage the boss properly.

So, I had mega ping in the attention span and didn't die.

That's.... interesting. Were you dealing with the whole mega lag the last couple of weeks, or was that before?

The cues - either visual or audio - have (for me) always been just as the actual synergy is expiring.

This was a while ago. I think you just kill bonus adds to get it. Kill some adds and get "special vision thing" and then use it to be able to damage the boss. I don't recall it really having much needs for timing.

Edit I can't even remember if I had to literally activate the synergy or if it automatically did when I stood in the shiny green spot. Might not even need to do that

SilverBride · June 3

disky wrote: »

...here we are with the biggest thread on the forum, full of people talking about it. Even with many of the people who hold my opinion bugging out (including many of my friends), this is still the biggest thread on the forum. So there's obviously something to it, right?

There are a lot of posts but the majority of them have been made by the same handful of posters. The only reason this thread has gone on this long is because it was created to address a problem, so it has not been locked.

disky wrote: »

ZOS has the numbers but they know they're also failing to serve a huge group of people that would love the game if they just listened and did something about this.

They already have a huge group of players that love the game now. Changing it into something different to try to bring in players that don't like what it currently is could have very negative consequences.

TaSheen · June 3

spartaxoxo wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Eh, so far, I'm not one who fits the "stories that everyone can beat" demographic. High Isle was my last attempt at that.

It didn't go well. It took me DAYS of agony to get through it. I've never even considered attempting the following zone stories. Not hap'nin. And.... up to that point.... zone questing was what I lived for.

Necrom's final boss would probably be easier for you. You have ages to activate the synergy

Depends on what "ages" is in my realtime - satellite is.... hardly optimal, and combined with slow reflexes....

I was letting my companion kill it so I could hear dialogue properly. And I just avoided damage/killed adds. I kind of zoned out at some point and didn't even notice that my companion wasn't getting anything done. And then eventually an audio queue reminded me that I was supposed to use a synergy in order to be able to damage the boss properly.

So, I had mega ping in the attention span and didn't die.

That's.... interesting. Were you dealing with the whole mega lag the last couple of weeks, or was that before?

The cues - either visual or audio - have (for me) always been just as the actual synergy is expiring.

This was a while ago. I think you just kill bonus adds to get it. Kill some adds and get "special vision thing" and then use it to be able to damage the boss. I don't recall it really having much needs for timing.

Edit I can't even remember if I had to literally activate the synergy or if it automatically did when I stood in the shiny green spot. Might not even need to do that

In ter est ing.... I may give it shot and see what might happen. That is not at all what happened in High Isle.

And sorry for derail.

ToRelax · June 3

disky wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

My feeling is that if it were an overwhelming number of people clamoring for "more challenging overland" ZOS would have either already done something about it or be working on it.

And they have done a few things: Bastion Nymic and Infinite Archive (both stated as "response" to "more challenging") - and I personally have found Necrom and Apocrypha more difficult overland (but of course that's just me).

ZOS has the numbers. Even if the numbers are in the "more challenge" group's favor, I'm sure they have a process in place to deal with such a major change, and who knows how long that cycle might be.

I am sure that the majority of people who regularly take part in overland content enjoy it at the level of difficulty it's at right now, but that metric misses a couple of important factors: people who don't like it don't do it, and people who don't find something for them in ESO stop playing. [...]

This is backwards. For people who find overland too easy, there are three options:
1. Exclusively do other content
2. Leave the game altogether
3. Do it anyway for a different reason than difficulty

People for whom previous more challenging content, like Craglorn, was too difficult, didn't have option 3. (And in part neither did the rest, because of forced grouping mechanisms... how those ever became such a staple in game design is beyond me. Even some single player game have them! /rant over)

The reasons why someone would do overland anyway are many and discussed at length in this thread; rewards in terms of items or abilities, achievements or other completionism, lore, cosmetics, and of course the story itself. There is so much players could be interested in, that there are probably very few who just never do overland quests, ever.

Your conclusion, then, is still correct: the statistics hide the players not playing because overland is too easy for them. It's just better hidden because you can't simply look at active players who avoid overland to figure out their potential numbers.

disky · June 3

spartaxoxo wrote: »

disky wrote: »

I am sure that the majority of people who regularly take part in overland content enjoy it at the level of difficulty it's at right now, but that metric misses a couple of important factors: people who don't like it don't do it, and people who don't find something for them in ESO stop playing.

They have stated in the past that the vast majority of the playerbase prefers the story content and exploring.

Right, yes, the vast majority of the playerbase that continues playing because they aren't bored or frustrated with the too-easy content.

disky · June 3

SilverBride wrote: »

There are a lot of posts but the majority of them have been made by the same handful of posters. The only reason this thread has gone on this long is because it was created to address a problem, so it has not been locked.

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't this thread created because there were so many threads about this topic that they just started closing them all in favor of this? And doesn't that still happen even today?

SilverBride wrote: »

They already have a huge group of players that love the game now. Changing it into something different to try to bring in players that don't like what it currently is could have very negative consequences.

Because no online game developer would ever want to grow their playerbase by giving a group of new or disaffected players a way to enjoy the content they've already made. Obviously a bad idea.

I don't understand why I have to keep saying this: there are ways to do this that don't affect the current experience. It's not impossible to do. It has been done elsewhere. I really don't want to have to say this again.

SilverBride · June 3

disky wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't this thread created because there were so many threads about this topic that they just started closing them all in favor of this? And doesn't that still happen even today?

Most of the threads were started by the same group of players. A thread would start, it would quickly devolve and be closed. A week later a new one was started. It happened so consistently that posters were making comments like "Oh has a week gone by already?" It created a very negative experience on the forums, so this thread was started to address that.

disky wrote: »

Because no online game developer would ever want to grow their playerbase by giving a group of new or disaffected players a way to enjoy the content they've already made. Obviously a bad idea.

Not at the risk of losing the many players that are already satisfied. The old adage "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" makes a lot of sense.

disky · June 3

SilverBride wrote: »

And they have already said more than once that they are not going to do those things.

But that's what I'm asking for, and we keep going back and forth as if that's not what I'm asking for. You made it clear that you disagree with me months ago but we keep saying the same things to each other. You know my stance and disagree with it, and I'm not going to stop talking about it, so we're at a discussion dead-end, aren't we? Let's just agree to disagree and move on instead of repeating ourselves.

SilverBride · June 3

disky wrote: »

But that's what I'm asking for, and we keep going back and forth as if that's not what I'm asking for. You made it clear that you disagree with me months ago but we keep saying the same things to each other. You know my stance and disagree with it, and I'm not going to stop talking about it, so we're at a discussion dead-end, aren't we? Let's just agree to disagree and move on instead of repeating ourselves.

I actually edited my post to remove that quote because I didn't want to get into a big back and forth surrounding what was or wasn't said.

But I agree that we have reached an impasse, and I also am not going to change my stance or stop defending it. So we will let it stand at that.

Nathitaim · June 3

Hi again!

I have posted yesterday and since then 3 pages worth of entries. However, diligently having read (nearly) all of it, I think it can be summarized as:

Group A: Some players are asking for the ability to make overland content more challenging WITHOUT AFFECTING other players. They are fully aware other challenging content exists, but would prefer to enjoy standard zones with a little more challenge. They are not looking to gain any advantages over other players.

Group B: Other players are afraid their game experience is altered in any way. Group A however did say they want a change that doesn't affect others...

Group C: This group ensures everyone is aware that ZOS will not change overland content and have already stated that players looking for more challenging content are funneled into dungeons/trials etc.

Also, they seem to wonder why the same people post here over and over and not more different players? I can answer only for myself, that it should be enough asking for a change without any effect on others once. ZOS should then reply at some point in time.

Ultimately all of the three groups' interests are basically compatible . Everyone can be kept or made happy, if ZOS were to re-evaluate the requests in this thread.

vsrs_au · June 3

Nathitaim wrote: »

Also, they seem to wonder why the same people post here over and over and not more different players? I can answer only for myself, that it should be enough asking for a change without any effect on others once. ZOS should then reply at some point in time.

I can tell you one reason why the same people post here over and over: it's because they keep pushing their agendas over and over, until anyone else gets sick of getting nowhere in the debate, and quits the discussion. I've seen this, because I've followed this thread since its inception, and also posted in it occasionally.

FlopsyPrince · June 3

disky wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm referring to Caldwell's Silver and Caldwell's Gold

Okay, but that's not something I wanted either. Cadwell's is a very specific mode that forces you to do base-game content that you may not want to do. I highly doubt Cadwell's is anything like what most of the people in this thread are asking for or we'd just say "bring back Cadwell's, please". Any reasonable person in this thread wants a proper increase to overland difficulty, across all zones, not content-gated, and ideally configurable. And optional, of course. People disagree on the specifics but I think that's the general idea.

As TaSheen said, ZOS tends to come up with their own interpretations of what the community wants and Cadwell's is one of many of those ideas. If ZOS listens to what the people in this thread are asking for and implements something even remotely like what we want, I think they'll find there are a lot more people interested in their effort.

Cadwell's Silver and Gold is still in the game. I am progressing on it with one of my mains (PC-NA) but not quickly.

Shagreth · June 3

vsrs_au wrote: »

I can tell you one reason why the same people post here over and over: it's because they keep pushing their agendas over and over, until anyone else gets sick of getting nowhere in the debate, and quits the discussion. I've seen this, because I've followed this thread since its inception, and also posted in it occasionally.

Any not a single one of you find this suspicious? I shouldn't say more, but all this feels depressingly desperate from both sides. Personally, I want to see the game do well and survive long-term and I don't think the current direction will do that. Saying that the majority of the content (that is overland) is 'fine as is' just breaks my mind.

Me and Ghostcrawler (ex WoW dev) have had lengthy conversations in the past on twitter about what was happening at the time with WoW and how questing had turned from something you wanted to engage with to something completely tedious. The ability to faceroll the content and the loss of the meaning of progression were the reasons why, to put it simply.. people got bored, fast. What we need is a reasonably challenging overland and the proper tools to teach people how to play their class and better prepare them for end-game content, that way we may finally even see more than 20 active actual tanks per server, imagine that. End-game content has become so niche it's about to disappear, and that is bad. One Tamriel was the beginning of the end, what we had before was NOT ideal either, but then the power creep started and here we are today.

Anyway, somehow the usual posters here will have you believe that the majority of ESO players are in their 80's or something and that the game will suddenly die if change comes its way. How they can even claim that is beyond me..

disky · June 3

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

disky wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm referring to Caldwell's Silver and Caldwell's Gold

Okay, but that's not something I wanted either. Cadwell's is a very specific mode that forces you to do base-game content that you may not want to do. I highly doubt Cadwell's is anything like what most of the people in this thread are asking for or we'd just say "bring back Cadwell's, please". Any reasonable person in this thread wants a proper increase to overland difficulty, across all zones, not content-gated, and ideally configurable. And optional, of course. People disagree on the specifics but I think that's the general idea.

As TaSheen said, ZOS tends to come up with their own interpretations of what the community wants and Cadwell's is one of many of those ideas. If ZOS listens to what the people in this thread are asking for and implements something even remotely like what we want, I think they'll find there are a lot more people interested in their effort.

Cadwell's Silver and Gold is still in the game. I am progressing on it with one of my mains (PC-NA) but not quickly.

I've seen it having completed the main questline. I am intuitively aware of it because of the styles and titles which require completion of Silver and Gold. However, there's this strange and confusing quote from Rich Lambert that always threw me:

(from https://wccftech.com/the-elder-scrolls-online-high-isle-preview-qa-fsr-1-0-support-card-game-and-much-more/)
"We had Cadwell Silver, we had Cadwell Gold, and players really didn't like it. It was too hard for them, and when we did One Tamriel, we ripped all that out based on player feedback."

So I just think of it in the past tense and try to ignore it. The developers don't seem to think of it either and it's not something I have any interest in anyway.

disky · June 3

vsrs_au wrote: »

Nathitaim wrote: »

Also, they seem to wonder why the same people post here over and over and not more different players? I can answer only for myself, that it should be enough asking for a change without any effect on others once. ZOS should then reply at some point in time.

I can tell you one reason why the same people post here over and over: it's because they keep pushing their agendas over and over, until anyone else gets sick of getting nowhere in the debate, and quits the discussion. I've seen this, because I've followed this thread since its inception, and also posted in it occasionally.

For me it's about keeping the fires lit. Silence gives the sense that things are fine the way they are, and they're not, as far as I'm concerned. Call that pushing an agenda if you like, I just really like this game but for the fact that it's not actually fun for me to play, and so I want the developers to see that and give me the option to have a good time.

disky · June 3

Nathitaim wrote: »

Ultimately all of the three groups' interests are basically compatible . Everyone can be kept or made happy, if ZOS were to re-evaluate the requests in this thread.

This is what really gets me. We keep going back and forth about this as if we need to be arguing when we really don't. In a way I am kind of glad there are people with dissenting opinions as it keeps the thread current, but the very fact that someone saw a need to create the thread in the first place shows that there is a demand for this kind of feature, so spending all of this time and effort really shouldn't be necessary.

SilverBride · June 3

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

Cadwell's Silver and Gold is still in the game. I am progressing on it with one of my mains (PC-NA) but not quickly.

These are still in the game but they aren't the same as they were before One Tamriel. The ones at launch were veteran level zones and they were much more difficult than now. There weren't any Champion Points back then and the player's level was displayed in Veteran Ranks. The player had to progress through the zones in a linear manner, each more difficult than the previous.

It wasn't a lot of fun dying to trash when questing and it was a slow process, so I only did them once on one character. Most players didn't even bother with them because they hated the difficulty and this is what Rich Lambert was talking about in that interview.

Arrodisia · June 3

SilverBride wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

Cadwell's Silver and Gold is still in the game. I am progressing on it with one of my mains (PC-NA) but not quickly.

These are still in the game but they aren't the same as they were before One Tamriel. The ones at launch were veteran level zones and they were much more difficult than now. There weren't any Champion Points back then and the player's level was displayed in Veteran Ranks. The player had to progress through the zones in a linear manner, each more difficult than the previous.

It wasn't a lot of fun dying to trash when questing and it was a slow process, so I only did them once on one character. Most players didn't even bother with them because they hated the difficulty and this is what Rich Lambert was talking about in that interview.

this was actually one of the biggest problems at that time. players were leaving in droves because of that. They weren't able to do normal quests at a decent pace. If it takes the whole play session for a normal player to clear 1-3 quests
they will definitely leave, because they see no progress. I couldn't blame them. I totally understood. There are dozens of games which will give them a normal difficulty for questing.

Plus, who works all day and comes home to bang their heads on the wall, especially over trivial solo content? almost no one. The game is supposed to be fun. For most people, fun means releasing frustrations not adding to them. They did a good thing for eso, when they reduced the difficulty from that time.

There is a ton of hard content already in this game. The devs should just make it tiny bit more attractive again.

disky · June 4

Arrodisia wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

Cadwell's Silver and Gold is still in the game. I am progressing on it with one of my mains (PC-NA) but not quickly.

These are still in the game but they aren't the same as they were before One Tamriel. The ones at launch were veteran level zones and they were much more difficult than now. There weren't any Champion Points back then and the player's level was displayed in Veteran Ranks. The player had to progress through the zones in a linear manner, each more difficult than the previous.

It wasn't a lot of fun dying to trash when questing and it was a slow process, so I only did them once on one character. Most players didn't even bother with them because they hated the difficulty and this is what Rich Lambert was talking about in that interview.

this was actually one of the biggest problems at that time. players were leaving in droves because of that. They weren't able to do normal quests at a decent pace. If it takes the whole play session for a normal player to clear 1-3 quests
they will definitely leave, because they see no progress. I couldn't blame them. I totally understood. There are dozens of games which will give them a normal difficulty for questing.

Plus, who works all day and comes home to bang their heads on the wall, especially over trivial solo content? almost no one. The game is supposed to be fun. For most people, fun means releasing frustrations not adding to them. They did a good thing for eso, when they reduced the difficulty from that time.

There is a ton of hard content already in this game. The devs should just make it tiny bit more attractive again.

I wouldn't blame players for finding this particular implementation unappealing. It's content-gated and it's locked to specific content. On top of that, it sounds like it probably was too hard. As someone who wants the option to increase overland challenge, that isn't something I want either. There are more sensible ways of doing it, and the sad thing is that based on their interviews it sounds like this discouraged the team from trying again. I hope they find the motivation to give it another go, hopefully with input from players.

Four_Fingers · June 4

If a spread sheet was made, wish I had a script, of all the unique names in this thread it would be under 50 I bet.
Wonder who the winner with the most posts would be?

ToRelax · June 4

disky wrote: »

Arrodisia wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

Cadwell's Silver and Gold is still in the game. I am progressing on it with one of my mains (PC-NA) but not quickly.

These are still in the game but they aren't the same as they were before One Tamriel. The ones at launch were veteran level zones and they were much more difficult than now. There weren't any Champion Points back then and the player's level was displayed in Veteran Ranks. The player had to progress through the zones in a linear manner, each more difficult than the previous.

It wasn't a lot of fun dying to trash when questing and it was a slow process, so I only did them once on one character. Most players didn't even bother with them because they hated the difficulty and this is what Rich Lambert was talking about in that interview.

this was actually one of the biggest problems at that time. players were leaving in droves because of that. They weren't able to do normal quests at a decent pace. If it takes the whole play session for a normal player to clear 1-3 quests
they will definitely leave, because they see no progress. I couldn't blame them. I totally understood. There are dozens of games which will give them a normal difficulty for questing.

Plus, who works all day and comes home to bang their heads on the wall, especially over trivial solo content? almost no one. The game is supposed to be fun. For most people, fun means releasing frustrations not adding to them. They did a good thing for eso, when they reduced the difficulty from that time.

There is a ton of hard content already in this game. The devs should just make it tiny bit more attractive again.

I wouldn't blame players for finding this particular implementation unappealing. [...] On top of that, it sounds like it probably was too hard. [...]

Believe me, for anyone actually enjoying a challenge it really, really wasn't. But everyone was also a noob and stamina builds were extremely weak relatively, so way more people had problems than if we had that difficulty today.

SilverBride · June 4

ToRelax wrote: »

Believe me, for anyone actually enjoying a challenge it really, really wasn't. But everyone was also a noob and stamina builds were extremely weak relatively, so way more people had problems than if we had that difficulty today.

What about the players that are new to ESO? They are as much noobs now as we were back then.

I played through it back then, and I was in the beta and I had experience in other MMOs before I came here, so I was familiar with how things worked. And this was the first game I played that had such a difficult questing experience. It was too hard for most players as Rich verified and players were leaving because if it.

ToRelax · June 4

SilverBride wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Believe me, for anyone actually enjoying a challenge it really, really wasn't. But everyone was also a noob and stamina builds were extremely weak relatively, so way more people had problems than if we had that difficulty today.

What about the players that are new to ESO? They are as much noobs now as we were back then.

I played through it back then, and I was in the beta and I had experience in other MMOs before I came here, so I was familiar with how things worked. And this was the first game I played that had such a difficult questing experience. It was too hard for most players as Rich verified and players were leaving because if it.

New players today have much better information about the game and an easier time adding some heals to their builds. You can't learn nearly as well when there's no one to learn from.

I played through it as well, and I had to intentionally restrict myself to a single target stamina build to properly enjoy the difficulty. Now that wouldn't even help at all, so any higher difficulty option today would have to be harder than the old cadwell's gold for me to be interested. This is why I commented before it would have to be scalable.

SilverBride · June 4

ToRelax wrote: »

New players today have much better information about the game and an easier time adding some heals to their builds. You can't learn nearly as well when there's no one to learn from.

I played through it as well, and I had to intentionally restrict myself to a single target stamina build to properly enjoy the difficulty. Now that wouldn't even help at all, so any higher difficulty option today would have to be harder than the old cadwell's gold for me to be interested. This is why I commented before it would have to be scalable.

The game was much more difficult at launch and 2/3 of the game (Caldwell's) wasn't even being played.
Many players quit because of the difficulty.
When the difficulty was lowered with One Tamriel the game started to thrive.
It has been stated that a lot of players still find overland difficult.

This tells me that there would probably be very few that would utilize any increase in difficulty for questing. Also, as was pointed out, even the previous difficulty wouldn't be enough for some, so there is no consensus on what increased difficulty would even mean.

I still support sliders that only affect the player but I don't see it ever happening. I just don't believe there are enough players that would use it.

disky · June 4

SilverBride wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

New players today have much better information about the game and an easier time adding some heals to their builds. You can't learn nearly as well when there's no one to learn from.

I played through it as well, and I had to intentionally restrict myself to a single target stamina build to properly enjoy the difficulty. Now that wouldn't even help at all, so any higher difficulty option today would have to be harder than the old cadwell's gold for me to be interested. This is why I commented before it would have to be scalable.

The game was much more difficult at launch and 2/3 of the game (Caldwell's) wasn't even being played.
Many players quit because of the difficulty.
When the difficulty was lowered with One Tamriel the game started to thrive.
It has been stated that a lot of players still find overland difficult.

This tells me that there would probably be very few that would utilize any increase in difficulty for questing. Also, as was pointed out, even the previous difficulty wouldn't be enough for some, so there is no consensus on what increased difficulty would even mean.

I still support sliders that only affect the player but I don't see it ever happening. I just don't believe there are enough players that would use it.

I actually played in the beta, but I avoided playing the live game until a few years ago because at release it looked like absolute garbage and more importantly, I wasn't able to go wherever I wanted to go. When I heard about One Tamriel my interest was piqued, not because the game was easier but because exploration finally made sense. It may be that people like easy games but it was also just a far more fun game to play thanks to open exploration. I think there are more factors to consider than just "easy game = popular game".

Dahveed · June 4

I've said it before and I'm going to repeat it here again for people new to the discussion.

They need to ESO-ify the player debuff idea.

Make a brand new quest which could start any number of ways... with a voiced actor and everything. Make it a brand new event which can really make a "splash", rather than just a boring slider.

The quest:

Peryite's Blessing

An acolyte of this Daedric Prince contacts you (or you contact him) with an offer to join their cult. After several goofy trials (I dunno push a block around, press a few levers, collect some mushrooms or something) and a few different stages, you are at a secret shrine to Peryite himself who offers you his "blessing".

There are several different shrines with several different "blessings" which can be activated or deactivated whenever you want. You can choose which specific "blessings" (i.e. sicknesses) you want.

Each blessing is actually some kind of disease or curse which your character is afflicted ("blessed") with until you return to the shrines and turn them off. The debuffs are similar to the standing stones (The Lord, The Lady, The Thief, etc).

One shrine, if activated, reduced your damage dealt by a chosen amount. Thus there is a 10 percent, 20 percent, 50 percent, whatever you choose.

A second shrine will increase your damage taken by an amount the player chooses.

A third affects your recovery rates, i.e. stam magicka health recovery both during and outside of combat. (Make those potions useful again!)

As for any rewards and loot etc, there would be NONE. No advantages whatsoever to doing this, only the additional challenge and immersion of perhaps (gasp!) not automatically winning every single encounter in the entire game because you are just that awesome.

The only rewards for this quest ought to be cosmetics and achievements. So for example if you beat "x" number of bosses or enemies, however many quests, etc with this debuff you get a trophy, a furnishing, an achievement, titles, i dunno be creative.

The debuff is automatically turned off during group activities, unless every member of the group also has the same debuff and all agree to keep it on for greater challenge.

Seriously they could make this an entire Elder Scrolls flavour of gameplay just like Lord of the Rings did, but with their own salt and pepper and really make it something fun and interesting.